


Resfeber

by blesser



Series: Wise Blood [1]
Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Car Sex, F/F, Road Trip, Stargazing, The Southern Gothic Relocation AU, post digestivo, shockingly domestic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-13
Updated: 2016-02-13
Packaged: 2018-05-20 03:01:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5989732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blesser/pseuds/blesser
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Alana nods, looks again across the street with a hungry curiosity and wistfulness that makes her look much younger than she is, which is too young to die or even know she is dying. People like Alana Bloom deserve to live forever, Margot thinks, but instead they spend a lifetime trying to give hope away to other people.</p><p> "Would you like to go inside?"</p><p>  ***</p><p>  <em>In which Margot takes Alana from one haunted house to another, away from the carnage and on a trip down the I-95 and memory lane.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	Resfeber

**Author's Note:**

> Resfeber (n) - The restless race of the traveller's heart before the journey begins.
> 
> ***  
> Title from Feeling The Pull by Swell Season.  
> Bete read & encouraged by the ever wonderful Dark_And_Twisted_Thing

Within just a matter of hours they have hung up the phone on the FBI and put their salvation on ice. The little miracle bottle is stored away in a pre-prepared, prepaid and expensive clinic. Alana closes the door of the sterilised refrigeration cabinet herself, she naps off the blue gloves and Margot is reaching for her hand while the talcum still ghosts about her fingers.

Applesauce and Margot's horses are left in capable, well paid hands. With all their once and future babies safe and comfortable, Margot and Alana return to Muskrat Farm for a few brief and chilling minutes. Staring up at the high, wrought gates and gothic towers they watch as an arched windowsill sloughs off a mini avalanche of half melted snow. The mansion appears to be shivering and shedding. Alana hopes it will be ready when they return - stripped of awful memories, crime scene tape and the ever present gloominess hanging in the walls.

"Still so damned beautiful," Margot says bitterly, kicking an ornate flying pig statue with her pointy, heeled boot.

"Beautiful and bloodied," Alana agrees.

They have go bags ready by the door, one shared suitcase and a couple of necessities thrown more haphazard and last minute into a wicker beach tote. This isn't an escape, Alana silently swears, they have a good life to return to, the perfect life. She is not in the practice of surrender.

Alana packs them into Margot's red Tesla and they are shot like an arrow out of the Verger estate, can't even see the retreating towers of Muskrat Farm in the rear view for all the icy gravel thrown up by the wheels. Somehow Margot is still holding her hand and she squeezes tight like a child on a roller coaster as Alana pushes harder on the gas. Exhilaration and dizzying freedom fills up the car like the noise of the road and the engine. As they put Havre de Grace to their tail and hit the highway Margot has to lower the window to let in a blast of crisp late February air just to breathe right. She grins, messily unafraid, and her hair whips up into Alana's face and then they are both laughing and whooping carelessly.

Hands clasped and the radio tuned to something bluesy and unobtrusive, they skirt quickly around Baltimore and Washington, carefully missing the commuter rush. They chase the last of the sunrise until Alana's eyes get sleepy and she eases them onto the shoulder. Margot leans to unbuckle both their belts and as she settles into the driver’s seat she switches through the channels to something noisily classical. Loving the feel of the hot leather under her hands Margot pulls out quick and controlled, leaving a perfectly permanent, looping tire mark on the road surface like a sky writer. Hours pass in a blur of roadside scenery, as usual Margot drives in a smooth series of controlled manoeuvres and much too fast. In contrast, Alana, who misses her soundless hybrid, revs the car loudly and uses the clear lanes to sweep them smoothly down the 95. The drive doesn't require much effort, just following the curves and bends but not thinking much outside that in terms of direction or destination is easy. Hours of road beneath and easy touches between the pair keep them grounded and calm. Something about unfamiliar views out the window helps too. They watch the late winter frost of Maryland thawing before their eyes into something slightly greener, and then something slightly dustier as they put more miles between themselves and the old, cold horrors of home.

*

The illuminated dashboard and the bright pop, pop, popping of streetlights overhead signals evening and once again Alana is behind the wheel, hungry and restless, when between neon billboards they start seeing the turn off signs for Florence. Margot; who is tucked against her side, feet up on the dash and half dozing, leans up and whispers behind Alana's ear.

"Shall we stop for a bottle of Batard Montrachet?"

Alana laughs, head tilted to let Margot nip a little kiss to her throat.

"How could we not?"

She flicks the turn signal when, like a sign from above, the cutlery sign flashes by outside.

Wine and white truffles prove a little harder to get a hold of in South Carolina. There is certainly no Vera Dal to be found tucked away in the Pilot Service Station. Laughingly unsurprised but defeated, they instead head back to the Tesla with greasy boxes from the Waffle House outlet and a bottle of rather generic gas station ginger bourbon.

It is a clear, surprisingly mild night. Margot tries to convince Alana to hop up onto the roof.

"I did not survive cannibals, killers and spinal fractures to let pneumonia do me in," Alana says, transferring the paper doughnut bag to her teeth so she can fumble for the keys.

"And I _did_ survive psychopaths, invasive surgery and vehicular accidents to look at these stars," Margot hitches herself onto the hood and unscrews the bourbon. She tips her head back, feels the burn down her throat warm and spicy. She looks up to the big yellow moon and the Carina constellation winking down at them. A looming ship traversing the Galaxy, headed into the uncharted, exciting unknown.

"Get up here fraidy cat."

Alana sighs, not too inconvenienced by the thought of sliding up against Margot, thighs touching and squashed together on the hood of the car. She dumps the bag on the roof and moves around to the front, headlight still a little warm where her leg brushes against it. With a soft look she takes the bottle from Margot, who looks pleased and triumphant. How could she not? Smugly getting just what she wants, reclined on the hood of her thousand dollar car with her heeled boots scuffing against the red paintwork _-not red but dried blood brown in the fading, yellowy light of the moon-_ Margot herself is shades of sepia draped on the bonnet, eyes cat bright. Alana shivers down to her boots.

Curling her free hand carefully around one of Margot's ankles, the leather soft and cold to the touch, she keeps eye contact for the whole movement. Margot knows her intent even before she realises she does. The eye contact and the slow, sometimes dreadfully slow, instigations between them are as much a cause and symptom of trust as they are desire. They both have scars, on the skin and under it, some even running deep into the ever shifting rock/molten core of themselves. These have been mined out diligently and patiently with gentle, hot explorations and wordless negotiations. Trust and desire.

Margot holds her breath on an inhale as Alana uses her grip to haul her down the hood till she is laying flat on her back and tipped to the sky, Alana steps into the cradle of her thighs and runs her free hand up and down her side, to sooth and entice. Margot breathes out "... damn" and breaks eye contact, watches Alana's throat move as she takes another long pull from the bottle.

"This isn't a country love song," Alana says, voice a little hoarse from the fiery drink, "and for the record I am not afraid."

"Not anymore," Margot points out, not unkindly.

Alana walks her hands forward across the hood until she is bent right over Margot, the bottle thumps down by her head where Alana leaves it, stretching her fingers to let her left thumb brushes a little hair from Margot's face. Her hair is a mess, coat and shirt rucked up from where she had slid down the metal which presses coldly now against her back. They are pressed body to body and any chill Margot might have felt is gone, chased instantly away by the warmth of Alana's breath and their chest to chest, hip to hip arrangement. Alana is blocking out the stars, hair cascading, backlit and Margot can't see Carina anymore. She doesn't care one bit.

"Not anymore," Alana agrees and kisses her.

Almost.

She puts a kiss right against the bow of Margot's lips, and when she chases after her mouth Alana gets another struck just under her jaw.

"How are the stars looking from there?" She breathes against Margot's temple.

Margot tries to find an answer that isn't a plea or a little moan, but is halted in her search by the sudden absence of weight on top of her. She blinks. Alana has stepped back and is digging in her deep trench coat pocket for the car keys, looking totally unfazed, apart from her too innocent expression and fumbling fingers. Margot lets her head thunk back onto the car. There is a white cloud looming over the stars now, creeping across from the hazy, full looking moon.

Alana climbs into the small backseat of the car, the ceiling is sloped down dramatically so she has to slump about an inch to sit straight. After a few moments wherein Margot lays on the windscreen, the folds of her coat making her look like a giant bat, Alana grins and reaches into the front to get the key in the ignition.

Feeling the engine catch and jump underneath her, Margot is thrown from her sullen reverie by the vibrations that jar and tickle her spine.

A sappy, honey sweet song comes crooning and crackling from the blue lit haven of the Tesla.

She slides down till her feet hit the grass, and tries to look unbeaten as she too slides into the backseat. The radio dashboard tells her it is near on midnight.

"Better than lying in a cold field?"

All business, Alana tears a toasted bagel in half, chases the drip of melted butter that falls down her wrist with her tongue. Margot watches the movement with her eyes narrowed. She accepts the sandwich.

"Does it still do to you, what it does to me, when you do things like that?" Margot asks eloquently, with an ever present air of disinterest but an underlying insecurity. Alana thinks it is adorable and absurd.

"Of course it does," she takes a bite of her half of the bagel.

"Then how could you... why, why did you stop?" Margot asks eyes confused and hungry in the dimly lit backseat.

Alana chews thoughtfully.

"Because," she swallows, "after I am done with my authentic, romantic Florentine dinner, I am going to fuck you on the backseat of this fancy damn car."

Margot blinks, breaks off a bit of bagel for something to do and squirms. It's not often that she is the one that feels pinned and warm under the gaze of Alana's hot eyes.

"For warmth?" Margot quips once her brain is back on line.

"For warmth," Alana parrots with mock sincerity.

She thinks of about a hundred things, all at once, that she could say, _'trust me, I'm a doctor'_ or _'you did say you wanted to see stars'_ , there are even more filthy things that would make Margot's eyebrow twitch higher, make her lose her careful and deliberate way of speaking. The options are endlessly tempting. Alana is emboldened by the unfamiliar surroundings, the dreamlike feel of the blue light and neon road signs and the stretching dark past that. They are the only people alive tonight in the whole world and Alana feels thrilled and carelessly carefree, tongue loose and easy from the bourbon. _'Thank you for being here with me'_ she thinks, looking into Margot's lovely face.

"I love you," she says instead.

Without pause or grand acknowledgement Margot lets out a little breath, leans across oily paper that crinkles and probably grease stains her coat, and kisses Alana soundly on the mouth. The ginger bourbon is a fire between them, their lips tingle ablaze pleasantly in the wake of its heat.

They don't ravish one another atop half eaten Waffle House fare. Instead, in content but charged silence they finish their slapdash meal, the local radio crackles fuzzily and the headlamps of night time traffic spin past in a timely show of light like a pretty, illuminated roundabout. It reminds Alana of the roundabout she had stood transfixed by in Paris, her back to the Eiffel Tower and watching the spinning lights with her parents tugging at her hand. She pushes their trash to the floor of the car with all the serious romance of sweeping a desk and reaches with both hands for Margot.

 _Fuck Tartufi Bianch..._ Margot thinks dazedly as she chases the taste of powdered sugar from Alana's lips. She is happy and happily buzzed as she is pushed awkwardly down into the soft interior of the car. Alana is laughing and fumbling with buttons and everything smells like grease and whisky. It is overall a messily perfect thing.

With the seatbelt clasp digging into her lower back and a mouthful of Alana's hair, Margot wriggles in an attempt to get comfortable. Giving up on comfortable but settling with being so into it she doesn't really care especially Alana's hands have found their way up under her soft sweater and her fingers play out a teasing rhythm against her ribs. Margot pushes Alana's hair gently back from where it falls down into her face, with her teeth she slides an elastic tie off her wrist and gently, lovingly pins back every wayward curl. Alana suffers the process, teeth sharp and impatient on her skin as she indulges Margot at the same time as attempting to bend back to get their boots shucked off in the tiny space.

They are essentially making love in a coffin, in a bathtub during a hurricane, unable to move but sparking with frenetic motion.

Alana's knee slips off the seat and she huffs and laughs. Margot's head knocks against the car door more than once and as she arches her neck she looks up at Alana here now and she can see her as well as feel the reassuring and familiar weight of her. When her eyes slip close she can also see Alana just a few days ago burned against the back of her eyelids, the two images of her layered over one another in a complimentary contrast. Past Alana with the backdrop of a familiarly grand but haunting bedroom, her eyes full of victorious fury and a sad acceptance to her tone as she stands in Margot's memory...

_“You're dead Doctor Bloom.”_

_A horrible pause, a crushingly heavy beat of silence filled only by her brother, spitting and disgusting and terrifying. Alana stood so tall before him that Margot's very heart burnt with it._

_“Oh Mason,” Alana murmuring, so sad and so wise, “we all are... didn't you know that?”_

Kissing her now, desperately unhurried but at the same time so, so hurriedly desperate, feels like the start of a final rebirth. Climbing out of this space in the morning, this space they have laid down in together will be a resurrection. She can almost feel brand new sunlight on their brand new faces. This freedom is new and exhilarating for Margot, caged her whole life. She shares her thoughts with Alana like always, with nails on soft skin and lips against a hammering rib cage until they drift against one another, hands finding each other's in the dark and holding fast.

*

Waking when Margot raps cruelly on the window with one of her big gold rings, Alana sits up too fast and knocks her head on the low roof. She scrambles into her scattered clothes, is pretty certain she is actually pulling on Margot's jeans. She gives up cursing her stupid long legs and stupid low roofed car when Margot folds her lovely limbs into the front seat and passes back a hot styrofoam cup. She waves her hands over a few lit buttons on the dash and blasts the heating. Alana stops muttering and stretches like a cat towards the heat source.

"I was thinking I might drive today," there is a glint to Margot's eye, and she is definitely wearing Alana's jeans.

"I don't mind, really, you did do that horrible mess yesterday around ...." cut off by a jaw cracking yawn, Alana immediately sips at her sugary coffee like an instantaneous reaction to the wave of sleepiness before finishing, "...Fayetteville."

Margot shrugs amused.

"Tactical driving lessons,"

Another huge yawn from Alana has Margot smiling even wider.

"Hmm, you are right, I can see you are clearly the alert, awake and sober one here. Don't be an idiot, come get in the front, or stretch out in the back if you like. Get some rest," she beams lewdly, "you sure earned it Doc."

Alana flushes and catches Margot's sharp eyed look in the rear view mirror. How does she look so fresh and tousled? Alana feels like a used dishcloth.

"You cannot seduce and subdue me with coffee and heated seats," she says, tiredly and unconvincingly.

"Like hell I can't," Margot scoffs. She stretches, writhes really, in her seat and Alana's under-caffeinated brain jumps unbidden to Margot's legs around her hips last night, the ridiculous crush of their bodies and the sound of traffic rumbling paired with Margot demanding and laughing huskily into her neck.

"My gosh," Now-Margot is saying playfully, "it really is like sitting by a warm fire up here."

Alana's bones creak at just the thought and the promise of comfort, the metal pins under the skin are singing with pain this morning after a night cramped up in a funny position. Margot knows this.

"Did you want to stretch your legs? We can walk till we find somewhere who does half decent eggs?" She inspects her nails, "or till we hit the ocean, whichever comes first."

Alana shakes her head, does a full body stretch and then with an impressively limber twist she works her way to the passenger seat.

"Get us on the road," 

Margot doffs an imaginary cap and does something alarming and attractive with her hands on the steering wheel, manoeuvring them across three lanes of traffic and barrelling out of Florence. Alana notices Margot has procured leather driving gloves, Margot notices Alana noticing and winks. She blushes even more in response and tries to drown her stupid, happy smile in her coffee cup.

*

It turns out the ocean comes first.

Or rather, water does. Alana had fallen asleep quick and easy in the warm, fast moving car. Her last waking memory is of the blurry highway and Margot, gently taking the half full cup of coffee from her sleepy, slipping grip. Now she blinks awake with her face rested on her elbow, tucked up against the door and the surprising sight of almost-blue water outside the windscreen.

The car is pulled up on a little man-made bluff, a short drop over what appears to be a wide stretch of muddy river. A little way down to the left a bridge reaches lazily across and Alana can just about make out the little insect cars crawling across it.

The air is surprisingly thick.

"How far south are we?" Alana asks, shaking off the heat and drowsiness and determined to be awake and involved.

"Well, we did start in Hell and take the 95 down, down, down. How far can that be?" Margot says with a wry wink. She has pulled a pair of huge sunglasses from nowhere and perches them on her nose.

"Are we going further? Are we headed over that?" Alana gestures the long bridge vaguely, squinting to make out the land visible on the other side.

Margot cocks her head, crinkles her nose a little and seems to be considering but her eyes are hidden by the shades so Alana can't be sure.

"Eggs first," Alana smiles into the silence, "you did promise."

"I did indeed," Margot looks down at the trawlers and little jetties to some white buildings that stick out of the water like cranes on spindly stilt legs.

"Onwards," she locks the car over her shoulder with a flourish.

The buildings are a little way down the beach, but the warm air and the walk are appreciated after two days in a car. An energetic little dog approaches them enthusiastically; it has a shaggy coat the same sun bleached brown as the sand and the wood of the boats and buildings. Alana coaxes it with slow, firm words and shows it her hands. Margot and the dog tilt their heads at each other in the same appraising way that has Alana laughing loudly. The dog is fast, and the chance to run on the beach is enough to have Alana dashing forward after the mad little creature who almost runs them into the sea in its excitement. Alana pushes herself, feels her hips and back burning pleasantly and knows they will ache later; she prays for a stop over with a bath tub.

Pleasantly puffed out and starving they follow the dog in a winding path and reach what looks like a tea house meets bar meets fishing cabin which advertises 'Rooms to Rent: fees negotiable' in the window. The town introduces itself noisily as Thunderbolt, GA on a colourful chalkboard sign above the screen door. Margot blusters inside, holding her hand back to keep the screen from falling shut and letting the strangely comforting aroma of spilt liquor and home baking welcome them inside.

It takes a second to adjust your eyes to a place like this; a place where grandmotherly hands have a chair pulled out and a coffee pot within reach before your eyes have got used to the dim bar lights. Before you can form a civil smile there are a chorus of "ma'ams" and "welcome folks, what's your poison?" come flying at you, all background noise to the demandingly noisy jukebox and the ever pixelated smattering of applause from the sports channel on a dusty TV set over the bar.

Alana and Margot take the freely running stream of coffee gladly but decline the offer of a welcoming pour from the bottle of the day-drinking regulars propped up by the bar. Margot order eggs 'however the house does it' and as much toast as the table can hold. The little inn is dark, smells a bit of river mud and if Alana closes her eyes she can almost imagine it swaying on its stilts like a precarious circus performer. Despite this, and the curious glances grazing their table, it is undoubtedly the safest they have both felt in months.

Margot watches Alana dip a toast corner into a runny yellow yolk and marvels at the strange familiarity and closeness she feels; how they can both be content to feel at home and at peace in a faraway, strange place. Perhaps all the home Margot ever had before was actually the strange place and she had to drive six hundred miles to find peace. She tells Alana this, nudging their sandy boots together under the table.

"We could've found peace in Baltimore, I think." Alana's brow furrows in that too serious sort of way and she presses her foot a bit more firmly against Margot's calf. She is all about points of contact when she can read signs of stress in the air.

Margot breaks eye contact and stares instead at her quickly emptied plate.

"Driving six hundred miles to find peace sounds a lot like your still running away from something, Margot, we are free of it now aren't we? You don't have anything to run away from anymore."

"Not running away," Margot says quietly, tells herself she isn't -shy- but glances up through her lashes despite this, "but what if I was running towards something? With you."

Thoughtful and cautious -but with a brain Margot knows runs a mile a minute- Alana sits still and doesn't break eye contact. This isn't a rejection, they don't pass I Love You's out like it is something to prove, or tire of each other's company. Margot has had Alana kiss those words into her skin, signed off a message 'Love, A'. Alana has even cradled her face and said it directly to her and still she expects nothing.

A willing victim, Margot is covered head to toe in Alana's easy but not cheaply given affection, but has never said the words back to her, not out loud or in ink. Still she doesn't think for a second that Alana would get up and walk out; Margot knows she would never leave anyone without an escape route. Even in their single minded collisions of the early days, fuelled by mutual attraction and a mutual goal, Margot knew instantly that this wasn't a cruel woman she had invited into her home, her bed and her plans. Alana was driven by justice and somehow managed to make it an entirely un-corny and noble pursuit.

Margot pushes their plates aside with a clink that is masked by the rumble of a home run or a touch down or something on the TV and for a wacky moment the whole bar seems to cheer as their fingertips touch, Alana easily closing the gap and folding their hands together.

Taking an oddly shaky breath, Margot brings their laced fingers to her lips and puts into Alana's hands the most dangerous of all things. "I trust you," she says clear and unwavering.

The bar applauds them again.

*

The news breaks officially mid morning on their second day in Thunderbolt. Alana is surprised it has taken so long but Margot doesn't even raise an eyebrow at the red breaking news banner that ticks along the bottom of the small television set on the wall. Alana looks at the words 'MUSKRAT FARM MASSACRE' and with worrying despondence feels the sensation of water up to her elbows even as she sits at the bar, arms rested on the dry wood.

Margot picks the cherry out of her drink and pops it into her mouth.

Alana scrapes back her barstool and pushes through the swing doors to get out onto the balcony that runs around the hotel. She breathes in the salty, slightly fishy but grounding air and sets up pacing on the deck.

After a few minutes when Margot doesn't appear at her side, a trait for which she is ever grateful, Alana leans against a beam and types out a message to her mother, to Jack, to Will Graham and then quickly and automatically guts her phone with a satisfying savagery. The card and battery go flying into the Wilmington River, the husk of the phone she drops from the balcony into a bin filled with other empty shells. Crabs, their legs all reaching upwards for her, clawing. Alana looks at them for a final gut roiling second, then she turns away and heads back inside to Margot.

She works her way back to the bar, sees that Margot is turned so that she was half watching the TV and half watching the door. Two glasses with treacle coloured whisky sit in front of her. Alana slides back into place beside her.

The picture on the TV has changed, Margot looks to be engrossed in watching The Sting, but her eyes dart to Alana as soon as she sits and crowds into her space a little.

"They are gonna call us in," Margot says, eyes not leaving the crackling screen.

"They can try I suppose," Alana thinks of her phone; in pieces and sinking into the mud, of putting a match to the Tesla and wiping down fingerprints from the steering wheel first, from every inch of this bar, the glass Margot is holding now.

 _"Depends on which train I get on..."_ Dimitri Arlis is saying. Margot chuckles quietly, still looking up at the screen, still holding the glass and still acting so goddamn un-phased that Alana pushes back the stool again and gets nearly to the stairs before hands are around her elbows.

Feeling the fight and anger in Alana's body, Margot pulls her softly back against her, tucks her chin into her shoulder and sighs. She is happy to hold her and wait out the storm, having recognised this one as a flash flood. Alana tenses up but sags quickly, deflates and let's herself be held and, soon, steered towards the staircase alcove, where Margot backs her up against the wall without any of the predatory feeling the movement suggests.

They stand together, locked together, for a long time. Alana is tucked into Margot and feels gratefully hidden and small where before she had felt so big she had been half expected an FBI team to emerge from the river and swarm the bar.

"Get me out of here," Alana breathes into Margot's shoulder, thankful for her strength in front of her, for the wall behind too, holding her up.

"Get me out of my head for a while."

Margot pulls back a fraction and looks at Alana with an unreadable expression for a long moment, she slides her hand down her arm to take her by the trembling wrist and lead her silently out into the daylight.

*

Thunderbolt turns out to be a stones throw from Savannah. They leave the car parked at the inn in favour of walking. As they pass the welcome sign to the city, Alana feels her earlier panic abated slightly by a disarming wave of nostalgia for her childhood days spent in the comfiest chair in the family library, wrapped up and lost in the sticky, sweet and bizarre happenings set in dark bayous and dusty towns full of weird and wonderful characters.

Margot seems to be leading them subtly, choosing a seemingly random path but glancing up at street signs along the way. The scenery gets less industrial and more civilised as they move further from the fringe of town. The avenues are thickly lined with live oak, the houses all triangular suburban gothic villas in sun bleached hues with dusty front yards and expensive American made cars.

Up ahead there is a tall three storey house made up of white and yellow bricks and tall shuttered windows. The house stands rather nondescriptly with others that line a beautiful square, they can hear the fountain that must be burbling away somewhere under the lush blanket of Spanish moss that obscures a clear view.

It isn’t a busy day, just one car has passed them on their walk -Alana had pointed out her chin and succeeded in not tensing up as it passed- mostly every person they had seen was on foot and presumably enjoying what seemed to be the end of whatever they had as winter in these parts. The lazy quiet of the town so far made it surprising that what could only be described as a small queue of people stood on the wooden steps up to the white and yellow house.

As they draw closer Alana’s mind looks at the little gaggle of people with their noses against the window and jumps to crime scene cordons and press vans trampling up front lawns. She tries to nonchalantly but quickly read whatever is written on a big gold plaque outside the house as it comes into view.

Alana abruptly stops walking.

FLANNERY O'CONNOR CHILDHOOD HOME

She freezes in an almost comical way, Margot steps back to take in the considering tilt of her head. She looks like a lost child who has just spotted their parents in a crowd or an amnesiac seeing home for what they think is the first time. Alana feels like she just won a lottery scratch card, a little sick and thrilled and disbelieving.

Margot continues to watch her read the sign with her lips moving, waits until she is still before speaking.

"Do you remember waking me up, thinking you were crying quietly but I could feel the whole bed shaking, and you were so sad, Alana, so sad. Do you remember?"

"Of course I remember. Why wouldn't I, I can't seem to forget," Alana is dazedly happy with what she assumes is an utterly random discovery and she wonders why Margot is bringing this up now. Her mind is in little disjointed parts on the floor. She also desperately wishes that she couldn't remember the shaking sobs that had wracked her body back then, the night terrors that left her quaking or the daily vibrations of anger, all of which have left deep fracture lines in their wake.

"I don't know," Margot shrugs a shoulder, "there are some things I don't remember. Perhaps I am more fortunate that way, in forgetting. But you just couldn't forget, and you seemed to be feeling on behalf of so many people. What was it exactly, that you said about Abigail? Letting her down felt like letting yourself down because you had-"

"-brushed her dark hair and read her A Good Man is Hard to Find," Alana sighs and smiles wistfully in the same breath, looking up at the house and suddenly she gets it, she gets it, "and it was like she was everything in myself worth saving and her own self on top of that to protect too. But I couldn't. I couldn't save either of us."

Margot squeezes her hand. She understands regret but wasn't familiar with much outside of self survival until she met Alana.

"I never finished reading her that story," Alana says, eyes bright with angry tears as she gazes at the house. A building she has never lived in or seen before but nonetheless seems to be unlocking the last door on her defences. This house that Margot has steered them six hundred miles to find.

"You could read it to me sometime, I'd never even heard of it until you."

"God, I don't know," Alana laughs unhappily, "it is full of dangerous strangers and murder and family tragedy, it was a dumb choice really, to read to a girl hospitalised by a psychotic family member..." She breaks off, the spell of the house broken as soon as the words are out and she looks back at Margot instead, lip caught between her teeth.

"Sounds like we would have had a lot in common." Margot says, smiling gently at Alana's worried look.

"You would've got on for sure; she was very... wilful too."

"A fine quality and one I am rather fond of in you."

The door to the white house opens and a young couple come out holding hands, the girl clutches a brown bag the size of a paperback book and is explaining something to the boy who is listening intently, watching her mouth move as she gets more and more animated.

"She died young too," Alana is watching the couple walk away from the house.

"Flannery O'Connor I mean, she knew she was dying at twenty five. Do you think it helps... the knowing?"

"I think," Margot says carefully, "it is probably a surprise whether you know for thirty seconds or thirty years that it is coming."

Alana nods, looks again across the street with a hungry curiosity and wistfulness that makes her look much younger than she is, which is too young to die or even know she is dying. People like Alana Bloom deserve to live forever, Margot thinks, but instead they spend a lifetime trying to give hope away to other people.

"Would you like to go inside?" Margot asks when she can't wait anymore.

"Of course. Please," Alana is half stood on the street and half in her childhood bedroom in Montreal, bundled up against the snow at the windows with a dog eared paperback spread on her lap. Deep in the minds of the bizarre and the mysterious, on roadsides and in churches of the wild, gothic South. She longed to explore these swampy, magical words from books which may as well have been set in the opposite end of the universe to her chilly but comfortable existence. Now she isn’t sure if she has a head too full of the macabre and the beautiful to still appreciate it. She wants to find out.

"Perhaps tomorrow," Margot says maddeningly.

Alana is not the wilful child she recalls and she will not stamp her foot. She does however look up with hurt, expectant eyes.

"What's wrong with now Margot?"

"Nothing. But we have plenty of time," she says cryptically, "don't be cross, trust me. Just... indulge me for a minute, please, shut your eyes."

Alana closes her eyes, half blind silly obedience at being asked so nicely and half genuine exasperation.

Feeling a light prickle against her bare forearm, Alana tries not to flinch. Something like the soft wing of a butterfly works its way down from arm to wrist and she recognises the pressure of Margot's touch as she tucks something into her hand. Eyes opening without permission, afraid it will fly away before she can see it, Alana looks down at the thing in her cupped palm. For a second, she is looking at a huge elephant moth all green and pink, before her imagination gives way to actual sight.

A single peacock feather, silken and holding all the greenish colours of an oil slick, lies in her hand. A fine chain is trailing between her middle and ring finger and Alana holds up the feather to see an ordinary, rather unremarkable black key looped onto it.

Alana looks at Margot, who is looking across the street.

She follows her gaze across the street to the house.

"You didn't..." Alana breathes.

"I didn't," Margot replies honestly.

She grabs Alana's hand, the key held between them, and they walk across the cobbled road. Margot is headed straight for the O'Connor house up till the second she halts at the bottom of the steps. Alana, trailing behind, looks confusedly up at Margot who stands framed by the white house and gold plaque behind her.

"You did not buy her house."

"No," Margot smiles, it is a small and pleased thing and it looks good on her. It is also infuriating, "I did not buy her house."

Taking Alana by the elbow and spinning her round, twirling her breathlessly on the dapple lit sidewalk, Margot halts her with her back to the house. She now looks instead next door, up at a set of black steps which lead to a dusky blush coloured villa. Margot wraps her arms around Alana from behind her, chin on her shoulder, mouth against the shell of her ear. She brings their clasped hands together, till they are held with the key and Margot's palm against Alana's wild heart, until the peacock feather is tickling the underside of her jaw.

"I didn't buy anything, my love," Margot whispers, "we however...”

She points in an elegant flourish up the steps with the feather. It looks like she is waving a wand and god maybe she is Alana thinks because Margot is absolutely made of strange magic and so good that it catches the breath in Alana’s chest.

“... We bought _that_ house."


End file.
